lly I've always thought it was rather a pity that
Frederik wasn't James and James wasn't Frederik."

"Eh?" cried Peter. "What's that?"

"It's none of my business," answered McPherson. "And it's all very well
as it stands--if she wants Frederik. But if you want to do anything for
_her_ future welfare, take my advice, and do it _now_."

"You mean," Peter said evenly, between stiffening lips, "you mean that I
could--die?"

"Every one can," replied McPherson with elephantine lightness. "And at
one time or another, every one does. It's a thing to be prepared for."

"One moment," urged Grimm, the keen little eyes piercing the other's
badly woven cloak of indifference. "You think that I----!"

"I mean nothing more nor less, Peter, than that the machinery is wearing
out. There's absolutely no cause for apprehension. Still, I thought I
had better tell you."

"But," asked Grimm with a pathetic insistence, "if there's no cause for
apprehension----?"

"Listen, Peter: when I cured you of that cold the other day--the cold
you got by tramping around like an idiot among the wet flower-beds
without rubbers--I made a discovery of--of something I can't cure."

Grimm studied his friend's unreadable face for an instant with an almost
painful intensity. Then a smile swept away the worry from his own
visage.

"Oh, Andrew, you old croaking Scotch raven," he cried. "Your
professional ways will be the death of some one yet. But the 'some one'
won't be Peter Grimm. That sick bed manner is splendid for bullying old
maids into taking their tonic. But it's wasted on a grown man. No, no,
Andrew. You can't make _me_ out an invalid. You doctors are a sorry lot.
You pour medicines of which you know little into systems of which you
know nothing. You condemn people to death as the old Inquisition would
have blushed to. Why, every day we read in the papers about some frisky
boy a hundred years old whom the doctors gave up for lost when he was
twenty-five. And," the forced gaiety in his voice merging into
aggressive resolve, "I'm going to live to see children in this old house
of mine. Katje's babies creeping about this very floor; sliding down
those bannisters over there, pulling the ears of Lad, my collie."

"Good Lord, Peter! That dog is fifteen years old _now_! Argue yourself
into miraculous longevity if you want to. But don't argue old Lad into
it. Do you expect _nothing_ will ever change in your home?"

"Perhaps," agreed Peter, with unsh